Interlude: Dog Person

  The kennels were quiet, but it felt like the quiet of an impending storm. Yesterday, a… a thing had appeared in the sky overhead and tried to grab one of the dogs in the outside kennels. They weren’t roofed—they’d never needed to be roofed—and it had flown right down, claws extended, and gone for one of the smaller dogs.

  Dev fought it off with a broom handle and the increased Strength the System had given him, but they weren’t letting the dogs out without supervision anymore, which meant the inside kennels were overcrowded.

  Maya was sitting on the floor in one of the bigger ones, four dogs with her. The lab mix was sprawled across her legs; the toy poodle cuddled up to her side; a half-grown Shepherd, unsure about this whole thing, pressed against the bars, as far away from them as he could get.

  Sam, the pit bull who’d been living in this kennel for nine months now, was sound asleep on his blanket. He was such a great dog. Completely obliging about having his home invaded by a bunch of other dogs. Maya wished they’d found him a forever family before… before all this.

  She blinked, and the brand-new interface in her brain appeared before her eyes.

  Dev said his interface had stuff now. Hit points and experience points, skills and a class. He’d chosen Fighter, which just felt so wrong.

  Dev, a Fighter? He was a healer, same as her. They’d met in vet school seven years ago, and he’d cried the first time he’d had to euthanize a dog. It was the moment she’d fallen in love with him. Not because he’d cried, but because he’d cried in front of her. It was how she’d known he loved her, that they could be each other’s safe spaces.

  She didn’t have a class, though. Just the messages, telling her that defending her world during the System integration would grant her powers and abilities.

  Defending meant killing monsters.

  Maya had killed before. Every vet had. But she’d killed to end suffering, not to cause it. If she’d been outside yesterday when the thing attacked…

  They were going to have to make hard decisions soon. Harder decisions. The kibble wasn’t going to last, and neither were the drugs. At the best of times, they had about a ten-day food supply. They were halfway through it, with no idea how they’d get more.

  One of their regular volunteers had come by yesterday with two twenty-pound bags. He’d said most of the closest stores had already been looted. People were gathering at the schools. One group of survivors had fortified the brick bank building downtown and were letting children sleep in the vault. The police or the mayor or someone had declared martial law, but martial law didn’t work so well when your guns blew up in your hands.

  Maya closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the hard concrete of the wall. She should sleep while she had a chance. The day was only going to get harder. But her mind just kept spinning with thoughts and plans and ideas, although not solutions, because it didn’t seem as if there were any of those.

  And then the spinning became real. Maya’s eyes shot open, and she leaned forward, trying not to vomit, frantically reaching for the dogs around her. They were gone.

  For an endless moment, she was nowhere. And then she plunked down onto a hard wooden chair in an office that looked like something out of an old detective movie.

  “Hello, hello!” The pink-haired woman sitting on the opposite side of the desk sounded bright and cheerful and much too happy.

  “Um, hello? Where—how—?” Maya took a deep breath and looked around her. She was not going to babble. She was not going to act like an idiot. Magic. Magic had just happened. To her.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” the pink-haired woman said. Woman or girl? She looked awfully young. Clear skin, no wrinkles, pixie-ish features, and bright eyes that were not a normal color. Her eyes were a spooky lavender, almost white with just a tint of purple, and they were definitely not human. “Eleanor Evandil, Ellie for short. I’d stand, but…”

  She was sitting in a standard office chair, but she wheeled herself around the side of the desk, tugging at the desk to make the chair move.

  “Look!” She pointed at her legs. “Legs!”

  Maya wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react. The legs were mostly bare, but they were also lavender, a much deeper shade than her eyes, but not at all human. And were they…? Maya looked a little closer—yes, they were definitely scaled. Tiny, perfectly even scales, just like a fish.

  “Yes?” she asked tentatively.

  The girl looked disappointed and then waved it off. “Oh, right, of course. You already have legs. But I came here thinking I was working with dolphins. I thought that was why they chose me. I was so excited when my application was accepted. My first time in an active integration. Aquatic worlds are a lot less likely to need the whole forced integration thing, and I’m not the best at transforming. My boss actually had to do it for me when she changed my assignment. Maybe that’s why I haven’t figured out how to use them yet.”

  The girl patted her legs, sighed, and pulled herself back around the desk. “But we should get to business. Sorry, I’m just excited. I’ve never had legs before.”

  “They’re, um, very nice,” Maya offered.

  Ellie beamed at her. “I think so, too!”

  She put her hands down on the desk, palms flat, the gesture of a person getting to work. “So! I represent the Multiverse Sanctuary Authority, the organization tasked with managing the timely relocation of sanctuary species. As you may or may not know—”

  “Assume I don’t,” Maya interrupted her. She forced a smile. “Assume I don’t know anything. Please.” She felt as if it were a safe bet that she knew nothing.

  “Oh. All right. Well, um…” Ellie looked as if she were rapidly reevaluating her speech, lips twitching and eyes squinting. Or maybe she was looking at the interface in her mind. Did aliens have the interface, too? Did aliens use text messaging apps?

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Right.” Ellie inhaled and then spewed forth information like a firehose. The gist was that Earth was being integrated because human degradation of the environment had made their native planet inhospitable to a variety of species, many of them aquatic.

  “It was the oceans that did it,” Ellie said. “You kill the oceans, and basically you’ve killed the world. Oh, it would probably have been a long, slow death, and humanity might have had a couple hundred years left, but…” She shrugged. “When it’s over, it’s over.”

  She continued explaining. Representatives from the Multiverse were on the planet facilitating the relocation of members of those species to a safer, environmentally sound sanctuary planet. As a result of events occurring during the initial challenge phase of the integration, dogs had been added to the sanctuary species list.

  Maya’s mouth opened. No words came out. They were saving the dogs.

  If she tried to speak, she would burst into tears. All that math, all those calculations about food and medicines, trying to decide whether it would be better to euthanize the oldest dogs early and stretch out the food supply for the ones that might have a chance… unnecessary.

  They were saving the dogs.

  “You have no idea how insane this is.” Ellie looked like she would be popping her gum if she were chewing gum. “Elephants, okay. About half a million left in the world, so not easy, but okay. Whales, under two hundred thousand. Easy-peasy. The dolphins, okay, the dolphins were ambitious. Five million, maybe eight.”

  She threw her hands up and leaned forward across her desk. “Nothing compared to the dogs. We don’t even know how many there are. The first round’s limited to dogs in cages and even that’s a ridiculous number.”

  She leaned back in her chair, inhaled, and her pixie face looked abruptly deeply serious as she added, “But this is my first job with the MSA, my first chance to impress them, and I am going to make it work.” She didn’t look like a girl when she said those words. Her eyes held something ancient in them.

  “Okay?” Maya swallowed. Ellie was a little scary. If Maya used her name at all, she'd call her Miss Evandil.

  “So.” Ellie’s attention returned to Maya. “Here’s the deal. Dogs need people. Everybody else, fine with a little magical support. Jungles all set, oceans stocked. We did such a nice job on the coral reefs; the dolphins are gonna love them. But dogs… last minute addition. We are not prepared. I’ve been granted permission to offer a limited number of human beings spots on the sanctuary world.”

  Maya pointed at herself doubtfully.

  “Yes!” Ellie applauded her. “Good news, bad news, though. Good news first. You’ll be avoiding the, ah, more challenging parts of System integration, of course. The sanctuary world is at 100% mana density, which means many things will be possible. You’ll have access to the System store, you’ll be able to design a home that’s comfortable for you, you’ll have plenty of items to make your life easier.” She gave Maya another bright smile. “And, of course, dogs. You’ll get to take care of a lot of dogs and you’ll have everything you need to help them thrive.”

  “And the bad news?” Maya asked.

  “The disadvantages…” Ellie twirled a pink curl around a finger. “You won’t be able to choose your class or your abilities. They’ll be assigned. Opportunities to level up will be limited. There are quests, but on a Sanctuary world, you’ll probably top out at Level 5. If that.”

  Maya had no idea what that meant on the multiversal scale. She was currently Level 0, Dev was Level 1, the volunteer who’d come by was Level 2. She thought most people, though, were still Level 0 like she was.

  Ellie recognized her uncertainty and added, “You’ll never gain real power. You’ll never be a full-fledged citizen of the Multiverse with all it entails and offers, and you will have no chance at immortality. Admittedly, not many citizens do manage the last, but the possibility will no longer exist for you.”

  Maya could live with that. It sounded like Ellie was saying, “You’ll never be a billionaire,” and really, once you went to vet school, you might as well acknowledge that you’d given up on wealth and power.

  “Finally, your exposure to other human beings will be limited. Very limited, I’m afraid. You’ll have neighbors, so there will be a few other people nearby, but there will be no true human communities. No towns, definitely no cities. And no choice about who lives near you. If you hate your neighbors, you’ll still be stuck with them.”

  “They will have chosen to be there because they want to help dogs, right?” Maya asked.

  “Oh, yes. The only human beings on the sanctuary world will be those who are there to take care of the dogs.”

  Maya nodded. She didn’t need to meet her neighbors to know that they’d be able to get along.

  “What about Dev? My husband. Can he come, too?”

  Ellie frowned, tiny lines appearing between her eyes. A file folder appeared on the desk before her, and she flipped it open, scanning down the page inside with lips slightly moving as if she were reading silently.

  She closed the folder. “I’m sorry. He’s a Fighter. Sanctuary worlds don’t allow combat classes.”

  “He’s not a fighter. He chose that class to protect us, to protect the dogs, but it’s only been his for two days.” Maya’s voice did not break on the words. She wanted to say more, to tell Ellie all about Dev, how gentle he was with scared strays, how the dogs all gravitated to him, but she didn’t trust her voice.

  Ellie did that squinting thing again. Was she looking up information on her interface? Contacting her boss? Maya couldn’t tell.

  Ellie leaned back in her chair. “The best I can do is extend the offer. It will be up to him to make the decision, but he’ll have to give up his class if he chooses to enter the sanctuary. And I’m afraid you’ll have to decide without waiting. The mana costs for these meetings are insane and I can’t justify an extended delay.”

  Maya exhaled slowly.

  The choice should have been hard, but it wasn’t.

  “Can Sam come with me?” Her voice felt small.

  “Sam, Sam,” Ellie muttered, scanning her file folder again. “The dog? Sure. I can assign him to your territory.”

  The transition was fast, although Maya still felt the spin. When she opened her eyes, she was standing on deep green grass in a field that stretched before her like the English countryside. Trees dotted the landscape, along with towers that looked artificial, like plastic light poles. At the bases of the poles were wide basins, some filled with food, some with water. Dogs were everywhere. Napping in the sun, frolicking in the field, heads down and sniffing everything.

  Sam popped into existence next to her. She put her hand down, touching his ears, and he turned his head, whuffling into her fingers. Hello, favorite person, she felt rather than heard him saying.

  A small building off to Maya’s left looked like the promised house. Maya wanted to explore.

  Instead, she waited where she was.

  Dogs came up to say hello, and she greeted them warmly, handing out ear rubs and tail scratches, and accepting sniffs and kisses, and still she waited.

  It was harder than she’d expected. She’d said yes without hesitation and she’d meant it, and the terms were the terms and she’d understood them, but still.

  The light shifted, and a door opened that hadn’t been there before.

  Dev came through, laden down with a bag over one shoulder and an elderly Basset hound tucked under his other arm, the dog looking resigned to the indignity. A crowd of other dogs followed. The lab, the toy poodle, the Shepherd puppy…

  She found herself counting. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… yeah, he’d brought them all.

  “Whew.” Dev let out a long breath as the door disappeared and the dogs began exploring, meeting the others.

  “You brought them all,” Maya said.

  “Well, yeah.” Dev turned to her. “Ran by the house and grabbed some stuff, too. Not much, but I knew you’d want the photo albums.”

  He dropped the bag and opened his arms to her, and Maya leaned into his embrace.

  They wouldn’t be powerful. They wouldn’t accumulate levels or unlock abilities that bent the rules of physics. They wouldn’t live forever.

  But they were going to have a good life. Together. With dogs.

  A helluva lot of dogs.

  The notifications dot in the corner of her eye blinked at her, and with a thought she nudged it open.

  The message scrolled before her. “Congratulations, your new class is Dog Person. With this class…”

  The message kept going, but Maya didn't read it, just hugged her husband tighter and laughed.

  I was gonna tell you what you were reading, but it would be so much more fun (for me, at least) to see what you guess first. I'll confirm in the comments when someone gets it right.

  Thank you so much for reading! And I hope to see you over at Thorn's Edge or Patreon!